| Blink | |
| Developer: | The Chromium Project |
| Released: | [1] |
| Programming Language: | C++ |
| Genre: | Browser engine |
| License: | BSD and LGPLv2.1 |
Blink is a browser engine developed as part of the free and open-source Chromium project. Blink is by far the most-used browser engine, due to the market share dominance of Google Chrome and the fact that many other browsers are based on the Chromium code.
To create Chrome, Google chose to use Apple's WebKit engine.[2] However, Google needed to make substantial changes to the WebKit code to support its novel multi-process browser architecture.[1] [3] Over the course of several years, the divergence from Apple's version increased, so Google decided to officially fork its version as Blink in 2013.[1] [3]
Blink's name was influenced by two factors: the implication of speed, and a reference to the non-standard blink HTML element,[4] [5] which was never actually supported by Blink.[6]
By commit count, Google was the largest contributor to the WebKit project from late 2009 until the fork in 2013.[7] One of the first changes of the new fork was to deprecate CSS vendor prefixes, including WebKit's; experimental Blink functionality is instead enabled on an opt-in basis.[8]